


Any Port In a Storm

by gallifreyburning



Category: Gallifrey (Big Finish Audio)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-16
Updated: 2019-02-19
Packaged: 2019-10-29 10:35:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,142
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17806409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyburning/pseuds/gallifreyburning
Summary: For Leela and Narvin, Liaison Officer Hossack's peace conference becomes a jumble of overwritten timelines. This is an account of what happened during a few of those forgotten moments.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Set during "Gallifrey 1.2: Square One," and prompted by [this post:](http://gallifreyburning.tumblr.com/post/182735784194/the-hero-shows-up-at-the-villains-doorstep-one) "The hero shows up at the villain’s doorstep one night. They’re shivering, bleeding, scared. There’s also a slightly dazed look in their eyes– they were drugged. They look like they were assaulted. Looking up at the villain, swaying slightly as they’re close to passing out, they mumble '…didn’t know where else to go…' then collapse into the villain’s arms."

The knock on Narvin’s door is entirely inappropriate for a peace conference: rough and loud and urgent, nothing tactful or diplomatic about it. Especially not at this particular hour, in the middle of a designated rest period. How is he supposed to have enough energy to argue with the Monan ambassador at their next meeting, with interruptions like this?

He considers ignoring the person entirely, but the persistent knock only grows louder. Grumbling as he pulls his white robe over his head, he decides to let the universe know how he feels about this state of affairs by flinging his pillow against the wall, where it hits with a satisfying thump and plops down onto the bed.

The door retracts more slowly than usual, because Leela has propped herself against the outside and slid partially to the floor, like a marionette with broken strings.

“Narvin,” she gasps, and he gasps along with her. Red welts cover her cheeks, swollen flesh has almost closed one eye completely, and blood drips from her nose. She half-rolls off of the door and into Narvin’s arms, so unexpectedly and smearing so much blood and sweat along the way, that his first instinct is to drop her.

She falls with an unsettling squelch, elbows akimbo as she curls in on herself in pain. “I cannot trust – we cannot trust anyone here, I did not know where else to go,” she rasps from the floor. “Help me!”

Glancing at the empty corridor outside, Narvin bends down to seize hold of her boots and drag them inside, so he can close the door. Once his quarters are secured, he squats beside her with a frown, his hands flapping once in confusion, as if he has any idea what to do with an injured, distressingly messy human. A shooing motion feels like the only appropriate reaction. 

“Rassilon’s ghost, what happened?”

“The servitors and – _cough_ – and Baano,” she says, as though this word is supposed to mean something to him. Blood dribbles from the corner of her mouth.

He tuts in exasperation – he can’t just leave Leela bleeding on the metal floor, can he? Probably not? That seems like something that would upset Romana, if she finds out later. Not that he minds upsetting Romana; in fact, it’s something of a hobby. But it’s one thing to intentionally drag his feet in completing one of his President’s ridiculous assignments, and another to let her alien pet bleed out on his floor.

“You’re making a mess,” he chides, leaning down with the intent of dragging her to her feet, and putting her on any nearby elevated surface. His hands flutter again, still helpless as he tries to decide the best way to move her without getting more red blood on his robe or touching any unpleasant part of her body. Which, frankly, is her entire body, but certain parts would be slightly more unpleasant to touch than others, he decides.

He takes one of her hands, pulling her up and draping her arm across his shoulders so he can haul her upright. She doesn’t weigh as much as he assumed; she’s not particularly tall, but seems to be entirely made of muscle and, given the surveillance recordings he’s seen of her fighting skills, she has an impressive size-to-strength ratio. Even so, she’s surprisingly warm and soft, her whole body sagging against him and her head lolling into his chest.

As he half-carries, half-limps with her over to his bed, she makes a noise that he belatedly recognizes as “Thank you.”

“I’m not familiar with human anatomy, but you do seem to be quite badly damaged. It would be very embarrassing to Gallifrey if you died during this peace conference, and I’m sure Romana would be annoyed at the inconvenience, so please do try to hold yourself together until I can summon help. I’m sure some of the servitors have medic – or veterinarian - programming.”

She reaches out, seizing the front of his robe with a shockingly strong grip, smearing red fingerprints across the white fabric. He’s yanked downward, almost toppling into bed with her, and only barely catches himself on the edge of the mattress.

Her one open blue eye fixes him with a firm gaze, even as her words slur across her split lip: “No servitors. They are – they are traitors. They killed K-9 and did this to me, with Baano.”

“You’re delirious,” he tuts, taking hold of her wrist and gently but persistently trying to pry himself out of her grip. “Your inferi – _ahem_ – your human biology probably isn’t equipped to deal with these sorts of injuries, I really must get help. Romana will be rather put out if I let you die.”

“I feel so tired, Narvin. We will deal with this together, when I have rested. But we cannot trust anyone else at this conference, only each other.”

“You’re bleeding on my duvet.”

“Your duvet is very scratchy, and you are the last creature in the universe whose bed I wish to be in,” she mumbles, red drool dribbling from the corner of her mouth onto his pillow. Her one good eye closes, and her shallow breathing evens out, and Narvin has no idea if she’s asleep or unconscious.

He certainly ought to summon the servitors. But then again, Leela is many irritating things, but she is not a liar. Whatever assaulted her was certainly real enough, and if she identifies her attackers as a Baano and some of the mechanical servitors, Narvin has no real justification for doubting her account. The servitors serve as the only security force on the planetoid – they were supposed to be unbreachable, impervious to outside influence. He could call Romana for help … which would mean admitting that he’s incapable of handling this crisis on his own. Admitting weakness isn’t on his to-do list for today, and he doesn’t plan to add it as a write-in line item.

He could step out of his locked quarters to search for her disabled K-9 unit, to sort out exactly what happened. But he hasn’t got a staser, because in the interest of diplomatic expediency he’d decided to abide by Hossack’s requirement that delegates not bring firearms or their own security measures – her planetary shielding and servitor programming had seemed sound enough, when he’d reviewed the plans she sent for approval.

It occurs to him that, practically speaking, the only weapon at his disposal is currently bleeding and snoring on his bed. Even without her knife, he has no doubt that Leela could make handy work of anyone on this planetoid in a fair fight, including himself.

Staying locked in his quarters seems prudent. He washes his hands twice, then spends a few microspans accessing the planetoid’s databases, hacking into the encrypted levels with the precision of a gardener sculpting a topiary, to research exactly what a Baano is.

Behind his back, Leela occasionally makes soft noises on his bed. He ignores them for as long as possible, but finally stands from the data terminal with an irritated sigh and fetches a damp cloth from his lavatory. Standing more than an arm’s length away, he leans over just far enough to drop the cloth on her head.

She groans from beneath it, like a soggy ghost, and reaches up with one hand to drag it off of her face.

“Wake up, Leela. Tell me what this dancer Baano has to do with anything; she’s just the Nekkistani ambassador’s trollop. What did you do to provoke her, so she put you in this state?”

Still in a daze, Leela’s eyelids flutter and she reaches out with startling speed, managing to seize hold of his hand even though he’s standing (what he _thought_ was) a safe distance away. With a strong grip, fingernails digging into his palm, she murmurs, “Andred? Is that truly you?”

“Rassilon save me,” Narvin snaps, yanking out of her reach. The warmth of Leela's skin has shocked him, both times they've touched. He’s used to seeing her upright, dangerous, bristling with primitive weapons and homicidal tendencies. But now she looks so soft and helpless, he feels a bizarre, fleeting impulse to use the damp cloth and dab the blood from her face.

He clears his throat and shakes his head, crossing his arms so she can’t touch him again. “I don’t imagine you’re embarrassed by your own behavior, since you don’t seem to have any shame, but _really_. I have far higher standards and better judgment than Andred. Snap out of it, Leela!”

Her eyes flutter shut again. He’s contemplating more drastic measures to wake her up, like perhaps shaking her shoulder or pouring a cup of water on her face, when the first wave of dizziness hits him. Subtle, like a tremor in the floor plating, growing stronger as the room around him shifts and settles and his time senses scream at him that somewhere, someone is _fiddling_.

He’s caught up in a time eddy.

Moving fast, he reaches for the communication button to contact the CIA on Gallifrey before this timeline shifts too far, and he doesn’t remember. “This is Coordinator Narvin, there has been an intervent—”

He blinks.

“Delegate Narvin, here are your quarters,” drones the servitor, gesturing stiffly at the open door. Standing in the corridor, Narvin blinks again and peers inside. He's inexplicably certain someone is already occupying the room; if he looks hard enough, he’ll find them lying on his bed.

 _Ridiculous_.

With a shake of his head and a sharp inhale, he says, “Very good, leave my luggage inside. I should get to the delegate mixer, before the inaugural negotiations begin.”


	2. Chapter 2

_Knock – knock – knock – knockknockknockknockknock!_

“Baano, I told you that I am tired and require sleep,” Leela grumbles loudly. On the ground beside her bunk, K-9’s ear-shaped antennae swivel toward the door in alarm.

“Open the door, savage!” The words are certainly Narvin’s, but the tone of his voice is winded and desperate, as if his lungs cannot provide enough air for a proper self-righteous shout.

Leela sits up like a shot, scrambling off of her bunk and to the door. As it slides open, a shockingly limp and heavy Time Lord tumbles into her chest. Leela catches him on instinct, even as her hands are already reaching for pressure points, ready to fight.

He’s certainly in no shape to engage in any sort of battle – her preferred type, a physical battle, or even his preferred type, a battle of wits. In fact, his skin has a distinctly green and clammy cast to it, and he labors to speak, sound stuttering on his trembling lips.

“Narvin!” she says, glancing warily past him and into the corridor for threats, and then shifting over to close the door with her elbow. “What has happened?”

“Poison,” he rasps, and as if to offer proof, leans over sideways and vomits on her boot.

K-9’s wheels hum as he backs out of the splash zone. “You will desist from spreading unsanitary fluids!”

“He is sick, K-9,” Leela says, breathing through her mouth to avoid the distinctly sharp smell Narvin has suddenly created in this tiny room. With him still draped in her arms, she heaves them both around and promptly deposits him onto her bunk, little more than a glorified metal bench with a blanket thrown on top as an afterthought. He plops onto the narrow surface, the back of his head smacking into the wall.

Face scrunched into a scowl, he groans in pain. Even in her current state of alarm, Leela decides she likes that sound very much.

“K-9, what exactly is wrong with him?” she asks, hands on her hips. In his rumpled, smelly and stained CIA robe, Narvin looks like a sack of potatoes. To complete the image, he slides down the metal wall and curls onto the bunk with another groan.

“I told you, I’ve been poisoned,” he repeats, his eyes aimed vaguely in her direction, even if his gaze is unfocused. “Surely even your primitive brain understands what that means.”

“I shall summon Hossack, she will have a doctor to fix you,” Leela says.

“No! You can’t. I think – I’m _sure_ she was the one who did this.”

“Then I shall call Romana,” Leela says. “K-9, contact the other K-9 and tell her what has happened.”

“Yes, Mistress,” the mechanical dog intones, and then goes into a catatonic state as it begins to transmit coded messages through the planetoid’s defense networks.

Leela crouches down to examine him. “How bad is it? Will you change your face?”

“I don’t” – he coughs, or heaves, she isn’t sure; she backs up a step as a precautionary measure –  “know.”

Leela quickly weighs her options, and decides that the best course of action is to stand back and watch him die. He’ll probably just regenerate. Of course, with her luck the next incarnation of Narvin will be more insufferable than this one, and he’d blame her for letting it happen.

His face twists in pain. The look is a novel departure from his usual condescending sneer, and she decides that she prefers him like this, when he’s weak and in need of help. His features aren’t so offensive, this way; he’s almost tolerable looking.

With a sigh and a roll of her eyes, she stands and turns to the sink built into the nearby wall, cups her hands and fills them with water, then swivels back around to drop the water on Narvin’s head. It lands with a splash, and he rises up onto his elbow in shock, sputtering in surprise and outrage.

“What in the name of Pandak’s ghost do you think you’re doing?” he spits shrilly.

“You smell like a dead cat-shark that washed up on the beach and rotted in the sun. I am trying to get rid of your stink,” Leela replies, perching on the edge of the bunk and dabbing his face with the blanket. “And I intend to keep you awake, at least until Romana replies to K-9, to tell me whether I should bother saving you.”

“Of course you should save me,” he says, muffled beneath the fabric. He’s sunk back onto the metal surface again, head lolling weakly. In spite of a few feeble attempts to shove the blanket and Leela away at the same time, he can’t defend himself from her ministrations.

“These are my favorite boots, they are very good for running and fighting, and you have ruined them,” Leela says. She swipes the last drops of water from his clammy face more forcefully than is strictly necessary, shoving his head back, and he groans in pain.

“As I did quite clearly mention, _I have_ _been poisoned_.”

“It is a shame it was not the sort of poison that chokes the throat, and stops the voice, so you would complain less,” she says, leaving him half-draped in the blanket and standing over him with her arms crossed.  

“Mistress, the lady president has ordered us to wait for her arrival. She says she is disappointed but not surprised that Narvin has been the source of such trouble,” K-9 says perkily.

“Perfect,” he groans, and then his whole body curls in on itself and he makes another heaving noise, as if he might vomit again.

Leela seizes a nearby trash bin, flinging it at his head from the furthest point in the room. “Use this, if you must be sick again. I will not let you ruin my other boot!”

The bin clatters off of Narvin’s weak defensive gesture. “Merciful Other, I’ll never live down the indignity of this death. I should have stayed in the bar and regenerated in the Nekkistani ambassador’s arms, instead of expecting help from a barbaric imbecile like you.”

“You and Flinkstab suit each other well, that fatneck is nearly as slimy and disgusting as you are.”

Narvin doesn’t have the fortitude to retort with one of his usual razor-sharp insults. In fact, he looks more miserable than any creature Leela has ever seen: his grey-blue eyes brim with tears of pain, his pallid skin slick with sweat, his body wracked with the torment of whatever poison is working its way through his system.

For an inexplicable moment, Leela feels a flash of deep pity and an urge to help him in his anguish. She draws her knife, and with as much empathy as she’s ever expressed toward any other living thing in her life, she says, “I will end your suffering. This will be an honorable death, far more honorable than dying of poison.”

His unfocused gaze sharpens, zeroing in on the glinting blade. “You – you – you wouldn’t dare! You can’t!”

“I will help you regenerate, and if the gods are merciful then perhaps your next face will be a more handsome one,” she says generously, taking a single step to the bedside, looming over him with her knife. “I will make the cut swift and painless, and then when you are in your new body, together we will track down your assassin and exact vengeance.”

Eyes wide as saucers, trembling and weak on her bed, Narvin lifts a single hand to ward off her blow. She reaches out to take it, as if it has been offered in friendship, her fingers clasping his.

Scarcely breathing, his chest still to the point of death, he gasps, “I feel – I feel something – a time eddy –”

"After you regenerate,” she replies, angling her knife for the killing blow, “We will find this Eddy you speak of and deliver your message.”

Leela blinks.

She is standing in the corridor, and the servitor beside her says, “Entertainer L-1, this is your personal accommodation. We hope it is to your liking.”

Leela blinks again and peers into the microscopic room. She’s surprised to find it empty; did Romana tell her to expect a roommate? She can’t quite remember. “We are supposed to live in these _metal buckets_ for seven days?!”

“I’ve seen worse. At least the lavs are clean,” Baano says from behind her. “Me and the girls played this flea pit on Saggis Minor one time, didn’t we Lexxi? And the cockroaches!”

“I am sorry, Baano, but I am very tired. I think I will lie down for a short while,” she says, because her head is muddled and aching, and her feet throb from walking so far.

“I understand, honey. Have a good rest,” the other woman replies sympathetically. “Make sure you stay ahead of that Time Lord. That Coordinator Narvin, he’s the one who selected you and your doggie friend for his entertainment. He looks a nasty sort.”

“He is,” Leela says, the words heavy with conviction.

Baano laughs, and Leela does not like the sound of it. “Still, it must be a blessed relief to have a Time Lord after you. They do only like to watch, don’t they?”


End file.
